Thanks to everyone who reviewed. Please R+R!
Re. the Hodges thing: My bad. I'll sort it out later.
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"She tries to pretend she's so tough, but…"
"But?" The prompt was gentle, carefully said so it didn't make him suspicious.
"No, she'd kill me if I told you,"
"How would she ever find out?" Laughing to calm him down, the man put his pencil against the paper of his notebook again.
"I guess… She really doesn't like spiders. I'm not too great with them myself, but…" he trailed off, staring at the notebook. "Wat'cha writing?"
"Nothing. It doesn't matter," The tiny book was carefully whisked away to a pocket. For some reason the man was always wearing black leather gloves. Perhaps he thought it looked cool.
"Anyway, I'd better go home. Get some rest before work,"
"You do that,"
As usual the gloved man paid for the drinks and left shortly after.
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This one is slightly harder. A desperate woman is easy to lure away from her home, but a child as young as my target isn't. Especially from a mother as protective as this one, but I suppose that can't be helped. Just any child wouldn't do, not for this game.
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Catherine tried to comfort the hysterical woman sitting next to her, but it wasn't working. All that she was likely to get any time soon was another box of tissues.
"My… precious… baby… Who would do that? Who could?" The woman looked at her desperately, as if she knew.
"There are some very sick people out there, Ms Mackenzie," replied Catherine. "And it's my job to try and catch them,"
"You will… You will find her, won't you? She's all I have left in the world,"
"I know how you feel. I'm a mom too," Catherine tried to conceal her impatience. "Do you have any pictures of Eve? Then I could give her description to the officers to help them find her,"
"Yes, in that drawer," Mrs Mackenzie gestured to a large drawer in her desk. Catherine opened it, to find it full of pictures of a little girl. One that looked very like Linsey.
"She was always so beautiful…" Catherine left her staring into the drawer with a misty smile on her face, not wanting to pull her back to reality.
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So helpless. Such a pity to kill such a pretty girl, but I am not the one to provide the nightmares. With my little eight-legged friends, that's already there.
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It was a scene from hell.
They were a little way out into the desert, a place where nothing grew, not even the scrubby brush that could be found elsewhere. The dust that lay in a thin layer over the hard-baked earth was stirred up a little by the wind, promising to have already removed any tracks or footprints.
In the centre of this desolate spot lay a small lump covered in a thin sheet of cotton that had probably once been white, but was now a brownish gray.
Sitting on top of the sheet like the king of the castle as a large, fat tarantula.
Catherine swallowed hard, and strode over to the tiny lump before she could think too hard about what she was doing. She took a couple of pictures of the sheet, spider and marks in the dust that might have been left by whoever dumped this sheet, but was probably a stray rock or bird.
With nothing left to waste her time on, Catherine took a deep breath and gripped the edge of the sheet.
One… Two… Three…
She pulled the sheet back like a magician revealing his last trick. There was nothing fanciful about this though. This was reality, as grim as it got.
She was staring into the face of Eve Mackenzie. She couldn't really say eyes, as where the girl's eyes had been there were only empty sockets. Another tarantula sat on Eve's chin, looking strangely smug for a spider.
Catherine did something she'd never done before, at least because of a dead body. She screamed.
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"How're you doing?" asked Gil, sitting down next to Sara in the break room. She had dark circles under her eyes, and probably hadn't stopped working all day. From the smell of the coffee she was drinking, Greg had given her a bit of his 'secret' stash.
"I've got nothing. Yo-yo, bought at a cheap toy store for cash, no records. Standard confectioner's icing sugar dusted in her hair that could have been bought anywhere. We got a brand for the conditioner, but it doesn't mean anything. Beautiful hair products are sold everywhere. Curry sauce… Just a plain old sauce, probably cooked up by the guy at home from a recipe in a thousand books. We're no closer to catching this guy than we were yesterday,"
For a moment Sara looked like she was going to cry, but to Gil's relief she didn't.
"Teresa White had a horrible life, and we can't even honour her memory by finding her killer,"
"No, Sara," said Gil quietly, sounding a lot more confident than he really felt. "We will catch this guy. I promise. Now go home and get some rest. You're no good to anyone falling over exhausted,"
She gave him a small smile. "I guess. I'll be back later,"
"I'll be counting on it,"
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"So, Doc, what have you got?" Catherine gently stroked the little girl's cheek. Linsey had looked like this only a year or so ago. At least the coroner had been able to clean her up a bit, washing the dust off her face and carefully closing the eyelids to hide the horror that lay behind them.
"Poor girl," he replied quietly. "Cause of death was strangulation, so she was dead before the spiders got to her. Did you see Gil about the species?"
"He's got an idea, but he says he needs some time,"
"Good. Before death she was raped multiple times, which probably caused this bruising,"
Catherine struggled to control a surge of anger. What had been done to this girl was beyond sick.
Somewhere, he was waiting. And when she found him, he would pay.
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That wasn't quite as enjoyable as last time. Maybe it was because I had to find a man willing to commit nightmarish acts on that girl, which was disturbingly easy. I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't part of the act.
I have to get it right. Anything less than perfection is failure.